Cooking ovens are often equipped with a self-cleaning feature in which the oven is heated to high temperatures in order to burn-off organic material within the oven. At the end of the self-cleaning cycle, ashes are easily removed from the oven. For safety purposes, it is important to keep the oven door closed during the self-cleaning cycle. Consequently, ovens with self-cleaning features are equipped with mechanical or electro-mechanical latches. Other appliances that may use electro-mechanical latches include cooking stoves and ranges. These latches typically use sensor switches that detect the latch position and the oven door position. The resulting detections interface with a controller within the control panel.
Electro-mechanical latches are typically powered by an electric synchronous gear motor which actuates the latch linkage and rotates a cam that actuates one or more sensor switches. The oven door activates another sensor switch by means of a secondary cam or simple linkage. The motor and switches each have a minimum of two terminals; thus each latch has a minimum of four and a maximum of ten wire connection terminals. The most common latches have six wire connection terminals.
Oven and other cooking appliance manufacturers must connect the controller wires to the appropriate terminals on the latch. Failure to connect the wires correctly can cause unsafe operating conditions. The opportunity for connection error is a significant problem for oven manufacturers. Further, the labor for connecting wires to many connection points is costly.
Conventional issues that arise with the electromechanical assemblies now in use on cooking stove, ranges and ovens include difficulty in connecting multiple wire-harness connectors to their respective socket ports on the assembly, waste of assembly time in the latter activity, electromagnetic interference from motors on or near the assembly causing false signals and complexity and time requirements of point-to-point wiring. The present disclosure provides an electromechanical assembly for oven door and other cooking appliance latching that solves known issues of current oven and other cooking appliance latches. In particular, the present disclosure provides improvements to interlocking assemblies, improvements that overcome problems with respect to saving assembly time, reducing assembly errors and improving operational performance as well as other benefits.